Determination of algal production in an industrial waste water plume using Landsat TM satellite imagery

This paper describes an experiment with the objective to examine the utility of Landsat TM for estimation of chlorophyll-a, in and close to an outfall plume; in this case a plume from a pulp and paper industry. The principal findings were that the near-infrared band TM4 was independent of the high load of total suspended matterin the plume, but strongly correlated to chlorophyll-a concentrations in the surface water layer. The effect of the industrial effluents on algal production was negligible, or only slightly positive. These results have implications for on-going efforts attempting to identify and rank pollution sources around the Baltic sea and their specific effect on primary production.